Mme Proust and the Kosher Kitchen (36 page)

I felt so proud of the doctor, who was glowing yesterday although he had been very tired Wednesday and is not yet up this morning. Hearing Dr. Thompson actually acknowledge his initial reluctance, and de Fleury praise Adrien’s ceaseless efforts, made such a difference to him. Adrien does not need all the accolades they heap on the Curies or institutes named for him like Pasteur, just some recognition of what he has achieved not merely for France but for the human race.

I was wearing my blue suit, Eugénie having done a very tidy job fixing the sleeve. Dick was very happy to be there, not quite a full-fledged member of the fraternity yet, but soon. Marcel is still recovering from his jaunt with Antoine, and was too ill to attend. It had looked on Wednesday afternoon as if he might have been rested enough to rise yesterday, but he had an attack of breathlessness during the night and left me a note saying not to disturb him. Perhaps it was for the best, since I know it pains him to witness his father’s success, not for any reason of jealousy but only because he knows how it disappoints his loving parents that he will never achieve such prominence in a chosen career.

Absolutely no response from M. Ollendorff about our Ruskin. I despair, but Marcel says he will approach Mercure de France.

A quiet Easter. Dick has a country-house invitation, and Marcel was off all day yesterday motoring to Senlis and several other churches in the area, and has now taken to his bed with a head cold. He seems to have instilled a Ruskinian appreciation for the Gothic in all his friends, for Antoine and Bertrand de Fénelon went with him, along with Robert de Billy and Georges de Lauris. Robert would be very useful—he is so knowledgeable and can keep Antoine and Bertrand from excessive behaviour. Marcel says they get quite silly when together, and all wind up giggling, which is not the right manner in a cathedral on Easter Friday after all. De Lauris apparently has no interest in architecture or religion whatsoever, but they dragged him along because he has fallen in love with a married woman, and needs the distraction!

Certainly, it is not piety that sends them to the churches. Marcel has no plans to attend mass tomorrow, nor does Adrien. He has fallen away increasingly, since he no longer feels that he needs to take the boys, nor set an example for them, I suppose. It is not my place to remind them of their religion and I cannot claim any great loyalty to my own. Nonetheless, believers or not, Adrien and I will have a good piece of lamb for dinner tomorrow. Suzanne has promised as much.

We can now say Dr. Robert Proust. We were planning dinner at the Ritz to celebrate last night, but Marcel had
a horrible attack yesterday afternoon, so I thought it best to stay home with him while Dick and his father went out to dinner. He insisted I leave him be, but when I awoke this morning he had left me a most piteous note describing his symptoms and suggesting his father at least prescribe him something for his earache, which he says has worsened considerably since Tuesday. Dick came into breakfast to describe dinner to me. The gentlemen had oysters, lobster, and partridge, so our absence did not hold them back, and unable to resolve a debate as to whether they should start with a Sauternes or champagne, decided to have both! Dick was looking a bit grey for overindulging, but is wonderfully happy.

We should plan a dinner for Dick to solidify his contacts and launch him professionally. He has the support of Dr. Pozzi, which is crucial, but Adrien and I agreed it would do him very well if we were to show off that support in a social setting.

Adrien is most alarmed about the measures against the clergy that the government is proposing, and got quite angry at dinner last night with the Cruppis, since Monsieur was defending them. Adrien says it is simply vindictiveness on the part of the Dreyfusards, but M. Cruppi argued that it really was time to separate Church and State for once and for all. Indeed, he said the government is not going far enough. They got very heated on the subject, and I could see that Louise was embarrassed by it, feeling that one should not be arguing like this when one is amongst family. I suppose they had
not realized Adrien had been against Dreyfus, since Marcel and Dick were so active in the cause and have thus labelled the whole Proust family Dreyfusard. My cousin cares little enough for politics, but her husband was rabid on the subject of the army a few years ago and was in full form last night. This time, however, I have to agree with Adrien, as I know the boys do. It is mean-spirited and dangerous to punish the whole institution for the opinions of certain clergy, who are not truly worthy of their Church. Nonetheless, Adrien should not insist so much on his Catholicism in these arguments: it insinuates that members of my family cannot understand because of our grandparents’ race.

Louise served us the most luscious rabbit with a mustard sauce and an excellent piece of Brie, so in the end food and wine covered over our differences.

I went yesterday afternoon with Dick to see the apartment he is considering. The room at the front that he may use to receive patients is small, but nicely appointed, and the other rooms, particularly the salon, light and pleasant. It seems highly satisfactory for a young doctor, suggesting comfort without extravagance, which should set the right tone with his new clientele. It is only right for him to set up shop, but still it is hard to see one of my little wolves all grown up and heartbreaking to think he will soon leave the house.

Marcel, who can be so dismissive of his younger brother, urges me now to pay closer attention to his advice for my rheumatism, and has consulted Dick
himself about the possibilities of hypnosis for his attacks, which Dick and his father call experimental but potentially useful. They say the Germans report some good results using hypnotic treatment for what they consider nervous diseases—and increasingly believe that illnesses involving a hypersensitivity and inability to conform with the requirements of daily life fall into that category. Certainly, we have always believed Marcel needs to exercise more self-control in all areas of his life.

Dick is now off to the country again this weekend, visiting the Dubois clan to whom his father has recently introduced him, but joined us last night for dinner with his uncle. Suzanne made a pork roast in George’s honour, all stuffed with apples and prunes, just as he likes it. We were laughing about what Papa might have thought. He dined in Catholic homes often enough and permitted me to marry Adrien, but still he used to joke that the reason Jews ate different food was so that we would never be tempted to socialize with the Gentiles. He and Maman were not great ones for religion, but they would never have eaten pork at home and certainly our grandparents and great-grandparents observed the dietary laws. Well, I don’t have a kosher kitchen and my grandchildren will be Christians. It makes me a little sad sometimes to think that Marcel and Dick have lost a heritage they might have passed on in their turn.

Marcel’s bad habits really must be controlled so I have
told Jean we are to burn no more wood until October. Last night, he came in at three and rang for a fire to be lit since he found his room cold. I have left him a little note remarking on his behaviour, for really he is so selfish. He did not leave for Mme Lemaire’s until very late, which I thought was unfair to Bertrand who had arrived here at nine and waited patiently while Marcel dressed. A young man wants to make the right impression, and no doubt Bertrand would have liked to arrive at the soirée while the other guests were still about, especially since he was being introduced to his hostess for the first time. I remonstrated with Marcel to hurry up and apologized to Bertrand, whose manners are always impeccable and demeanour energetic and cheerful, but all to no avail, since they did not leave before eleven. And then this morning Jean comes to me with the story about the fire.

Dick informs me he plans to spend three weeks chez Dubois next month. I expect it is the cousin who is the attraction.

Marcel has quite given up on M. Ollendorff and after making some initial inquiries has written a letter to Mercure. He still has corrections to do on the manuscript, but they need see only a page or two to recognize the quality of his French. I am so anxious for Marcel’s sake that he succeed at least in this small thing. He will be thirty-one next month and must watch his brother establish a practice and a career while he accomplishes little.

M
AX IS ON THE PHONE
, talking to his mother. He hasn’t told me that it is her and I can’t hear her voice properly, but I can tell from the way in which the faint squawking emanating from the receiver rises and falls that his interlocutor is subjecting him to a fusillade of syllables in Parisian French. And I can tell from his air of resigned annoyance that the speaker is his mother. He replies for a while in her language, then switches over to English.

“I haven’t decided yet…”

There is a furious response.

“Yeah, well, I am going to think about it…”

These phone calls have been going on for several weeks now. I know because sometimes I have overheard Max’s end of the conversation while visiting his apartment on the weekend, and other times I have heard the messages on his answering machine when we come back here after an outing.

“Maxime, c’est Maman. Appelle moi donc. Il faut qu’on discute de ça, quand même.”

He is slow to call her back, and right now he is hanging up.

“I’m hanging up now…”

Another burst of sound.

“No, really, we have talked about it. I am hanging up now. Goodbye.”

He hangs up and sits still for a moment, seemingly defeated by the conversation.

Max is threatening to quit medical school. Well, he has been threatening to quit medical school all the years I have known him, before he even enrolled there. Max does not seem to have any better ideas about what he might do for a living. He got a job one summer working in the information
kiosk at the Royal Ontario Museum, and talks about studying art history full-time, but he has only vague and romantic notions of what might follow.

“I’d become a curator or something,” he will say.

“Max, you have to do a Ph.D. to be a curator. That’s another five years, at least, after a master’s, and you don’t even have the right credits to get into a master’s art history program. And there are no jobs in the museums anyway.”

“You sound like my mother—there are never any jobs, we are all going to starve. I could work in a museum without a Ph.D.”

“Doing what?

“Well, in the information booth or something… I could be one of the guards.”

“Max, there is no way you want to spend your life doing the drudge work in a museum.”

“You’d get to look at the paintings all the time…”

“Oh yeah. I can just see you as a guard, looking at the paintings all day, until they fired you because some kid put his fingers on the Van Gogh and you failed to notice it.”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “I’d be too busy back with the Caravaggios and El Grecos.”

Max is going through a baroque phase in his artistic tastes.

“But no, Marie, I am serious about this.”

“All right, quit medical school then. If you aren’t happy, you shouldn’t be there. I’m dropping by McGill on Monday before I go back to Ottawa. I can go into the art department and get you a copy of the graduate calendar.”

“I don’t have to be a curator. I could run a shop, like your dad, or a gallery.”

“Well, you can talk to him about it any time, you know that.”

I am jealous of Max’s company and like to keep him to myself. My parents have met him only a handful of times—introduced at their Christmas party or perhaps it was the medical school open house, chatting briefly on one of the rare occasions when I let him pick me up at our house—but they have pronounced him charming nonetheless.

“My parents are always asking after you. My dad would be happy to tell you about the business…”

But Max doesn’t pursue the issue further, never investigates careers in art and keeps attending his classes as usual, until a few months later he will announce, yet again, that he is disgusted by his ambitious classmates and lacklustre professors and will not continue at med school next year.

I am not sure why he plays this game—except perhaps to torture his mother. He says he enrolled at medical school in the first place only because of family pressure, and seems to have hit on a strategy of graceless compliance as a way of punishing his mother without disobeying her. It is as though he wanted to test the limits of his conformity with her plans, yet doesn’t have the courage to make different ones.

But this time Max is serious. He is quitting medical school for good, hence the recent phone calls. Next September, he must begin his internship. Three years of classes and exams are over; he is almost finished clerking. He will graduate and the hospital work will begin in earnest. It would be pointless to suffer through the long hours in the wards and the nights on call only to quit the profession. This time he is determined, he will not seek an internship—or at least that is what he is telling his mother when she catches him at home.

I have never met the woman, but I feel sorry for that fretful voice at the other end of the line from Toronto,
desperately trying to control him long distance. I picture her, her face pressed against the receiver, and for some reason I see a fragile beauty, a young woman with hair as black as Max’s. Of course, she would be as old as my own mother is, and probably age is turning her hair grey. What does she looks like, Mrs. Segal, and what is it that makes her so anxious?